Please contact / consult your local SCORE consellor or SBA.gove for any assistance in start up concerns edit

I was in the restaurant business for 25 years. Just sold my place. THE most important thing is obviously location. Also, keep the square footage of your restaurant as SMALL as possible while still maintaining your concept. Regardless of how much money you raise, a large place can burn cash quickly. My place was a 10,000 sq foot sports bar. Great business but was tough. In real estate now. I guess that's not much easier !! Good luck to you. http://www.pvbrokers.net edit

"A little confused about where to start from", and "crossing your fingers" are serious red flag statements that tell me the time is not yet right for you to open your own restaurant. I know that's not what you want to hear, but I am being brutally honest because I have seen too many sinking ships throughout my career that I wish I could have talked some sense into BEFORE they mortgaged their home and trashed their credit. I often get calls from people asking me to help them bail the water out of their quickly submerging vessels, but many times their problem isn't one that can be corrected, because the problem is them - under financed, under experienced, under confident.

I often find that the best business plans are the ones that are already written in the mind of the founder, in where the founder's biggest hurdle is being able to type fast enough to keep up with their thoughts - but the plan is there. It's always been there. The written plan then just becomes a formality to save investors and partners time, so they can browse at their leisure without commiting to meet you in person so you can pitch your concept. The answer to the question you ask above needs to be second nature to you BEFORE you make that leap. If it's not, your lack of confidence will shine right through your business plan.

Consider the possibility that your future investor/partner may be the owner (or employee) of that out of state restaruant that you could become the GM of. Be patient. It will come. edit

1. You need to find a professional restaurant consultant to help you with the entire opening proccess - from creating the business plan through the opening and beyond. A successfully experienced consultant can help you realize thousands of dollars in savings and stop you from wasting countless hours of effort in the wrong direction.
   
2. Working for a chain does not prepare you for ownership. There are many more issues and variables to deal with than you were exposed to previously.
   
3. It's not about location or size - it's about context.
   
4. SCORE and the SBA are worthless if the people with whom you're working do not have successful experience working with restaurant businesses.
   
5. You start with analyzing the market you wish to locate in to determine what the opportunities are for building a successful concept, then you build the concept from the ground up. You cannot begin the business plan (any version) until you have the conceptualization of how you will create success.
   
   Hopefully you are not too far along that you cannot regroup and move your project forward in the right direction.
   
   

edit

Business plans are your vision of how you will manage a business, anywhere from incoming traffic to day to day operations and risk management. Good luck, Anthony edit